Watching from the Observatory
by ncfan
Summary: Ethel's observations about each of his companions, and their relationships with each other. Set pre-series.


Since I've set the series as being thirty-five years in the future, I estimate Ethel's date of birth at being in the year of 1747, making him 298 years old at the beginning of the series.

Disclaimer: I don't own _Record of a Fallen Vampire._

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_Ethel watches from the background as he always does, in the dingy room he and his companions call home, eating his onigiri and drinking water as usual—despite that he is well old enough to drink, he doesn't join Renka and Fuuhaku in their standard imbibing of sake, or Bridget in her occasional—okay, _regular_—binges of strong vodka. His body is still unable to process it as well as he would like, and he has a child's disdain of alcohol.

Takahashi Ethelbert, who much prefers to be called Ethel, thank you, was the son of a Japanese dhampire who had traveled to Britain, by the daughter of a local merchant. Both of his parents died when he was a small child, his father sending a message to the dhampire community before being killed. That is how he was integrated into the dhampire community and eventually into Bridget's team.

Ethel is still very young; he is a little over a hundred years old and has the appearance of a human twelve-year-old. Life in Bridget's team is new for him; he was chosen for his high intelligence, and Bridget doesn't want him fighting just yet. Instead, she has him run errands for him since his weak blood makes sunlight not quite so harmful to him.

Bridget first discovered him three years ago. One of her contacts let her borrow him during a fact-finding mission that turned nasty, and something Ethel did during that mission, for whatever reason, made her believe that it would be a good idea to keep him close to her.

Personally, Ethel thinks that Bridget's just making sure that the fiasco that was their mission doesn't happen again.

Ethel knows that the other members of the team very much look at him like a child, like someone to be coddled and sheltered and cast away from battle.

His relationships with the others are…complicated, at best.

For the most part, Renka tends to ignore him. He doesn't ignore him in a way that is meant to cause him harm or hurt; Renka's just a very impatient man, and he doesn't have much time to spare for a youngling like Ethel. When he does, he normally helps Ethel with his aim with a rifle, and occasionally sits with him in the meeting area below in the main area of the boarding house in Brighton that they currently occupy, and shares supper with him. They don't have much to talk to each other about; Renka is an experienced warrior who does not engage in the telling of stories of battles, and views Ethel as a child who would not understand.

Sometimes, Ethel wishes Renka would quite underestimating his ability to handle the tales of blood and sorrow.

The one who is most open around Ethel is most certainly the present Black Swan. Elisabeth Mendelssohn is, like Ethel, very young, and they both know what it is like to be treated like a child. Ethel watches with pity as Bridget and the others push and push her, expecting more of her than any other, yet treat her as though she is too young to truly join in their council. They have formed a strong bond of friendship, and Ethel hopes beyond hope that the Vampire King will be killed within Elisabeth's tenure, just so she does not fall to the same fate of her predecessors.

Every day, Ethel's dread grows greater and greater as he thinks about Elisabeth and the parasite.

Fuuhaku is a little…different. Fuuhaku is very strange; always wearing that suit of armor, always almost stiffly formal, even around him and Renka.

But for whatever reason, Fuuhaku has seen fit to trust him. Ethel likes to think that Fuuhaku vaguely sees him as a son; he can't really be sure. Fuuhaku allows Ethel to convey his hopes, his dreams, his concerns and frustrations to him, when no one else will; Bridget certainly doesn't want to hear it, and Renka isn't exactly the reliable sort in that sort of thing. Ethel is the only one who has ever seen Fuuhaku with his armor off, even Bridget hasn't; all Ethel can say to that is that he can see why he wears the armor.

Fuuhaku, for his part, is protective of him, to a more personal degree than the other dhampires. Ethel thinks Fuuhaku's cooking is very good; it is his onigiri that he eats nightly.

As for Bridget…well, Ethel's not entirely sure what she thinks of him. He can't be sure whether she cares about him or if she only wants him there because of his intelligence and views him as expendable as she does the Black Swans and many of her former dhampire companions. What Ethel does know is that she treats him with a mixture of caution and a strange, rough, almost derisive sort of affection.

Bridget holds everyone at arm's length; she doesn't let anyone get too close. She's cold and distant yet warm and intense at the same time. Fuuhaku is probably the only one among them that she doesn't at least partially treat like an inexperienced child. She's terrible in her anger and even more earth-shattering in her sorrow.

Bridget has a palpable air of suffering about her. Every wound that anyone ever bears either heals or is eventually the death of the bearer. Bridget has chosen the latter course, and as much as she has already suffered, Ethel fears that she will suffer much, much more before everything is over. He can't decide if Bridget enjoys hurting herself or if she is just extremely brave, but either way he knows that her story can not end well.

For all her strangeness and all of the cold, unforgiving steel she bears in her wintry blue eyes, Bridget is the most loyal woman Ethel has ever known; she would die to protect any one of her people if necessary, though in the end she will also send them out like pawns on a chess board to be slain by Akabara Strauss. Ethel isn't sure what the Vampire King did to make Bridget hate him so much, but whatever it was, it must have been something terrible, to make so loyal a woman turn against him. And he pities the Queen for the fate she and her husband will suffer.

Ethel knows, somehow, that it is the end of an era he is witnessing, and the beginning of the new. Humans are turning away from superstition and into the arms of their science. Their weapons grow more and more lethal; they are even devising weapons that can hurt a dhampire, without ever being aware of their existence.

Fuuhaku, in his armor, is viewed as an oddity, an aberration to the villagers of Brighton. They tolerate him only because his cooking is so good.

Renka wears the clothing of the time with extreme reluctance only; his hot temper is curtailed only by Bridget, and only with extreme difficulty.

Bridget hates wearing the clothing of the times, hates its restrictiveness, though Ethel secretly suspects that she adores the extravagance of the dresses that she must wear to fit into the crowd. She rules the team with an iron fist.

They are fire, ice and water, Ethel's three dhampire companions. Renka starts an argument, Bridget continues it, and in the end only Fuuhaku is capable of pulling them apart. Bridget will flounce off to her room to brood for hours and think up some crackbrained scheme to be used against the Vampire King, Renka will stalk off to the boarding house bar, and Fuuhaku will go into the kitchen to make onigiri.

Through it all, Ethel sits back and watches, and it's to him that both Renka and Bridget will complain later. He will listen silently, offer commiseration and pray they don't repeat it to the other. If they do, Fuuhaku sometimes steps in to defend him.

They are a strange, dysfunctional family, but a family they are. How they have gotten along so far without killing each other, Ethel doesn't know, but they are a family still.

Bridget helps Renka with his swordsmanship, studies and goes with reconnaissance with Ethel, and if she's feeling especially generous will even compliment Fuuhaku's cooking.

Renka sometimes treats Ethel like a little brother, ultimately (for the most part) respects Bridget's judgment and guidance, and exchanges small words with Fuuhaku on slow nights in the boarding house kitchen where he acts as the cook.

Fuuhaku guides and protects Ethel, advises Bridget and puts a steadying hand to Renka's nearly ungovernable temper.

And Ethel just watches from the observatory, as he's treated as the child brother and waits for the day when they finally do meet up with the Vampire King—

—And prays that their bonds will be enough to let them stand against their great and terrible foe.

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There may or may not be a ficlet about Bridget and Ethel's mission together in future; depends on whether or not I have sufficient inspiration for it.

The thought of Fuuhaku marching up a high street of Brighton, England in full armor just gives me the giggles every time I think about it.


End file.
